Transcript Appreciative Inquiry

Application of Appreciative Inquiry
and
lessons from “Watershed
Approach” to pilot project design and
implementation
The case of Harmee Education for Development Association
Presented on
CSSP RBUC Learn-and-Share and Relationship Building Workshop
February 07,2014, Addis Ababa
By Daniel Keftassa
Purpose of the presentation
To share experience on how
 Appreciative Inquiry is used to design and
implement the Pilot project and how
 Watershed Approach is tested
through the pilot project on “Mitigation of
Challenges to Female Education” with focus on
abduction, family imposed migration and school
dropout and mitigation of violence against women
What is Appreciative Inquiry?
• Appreciative – admire, honor, reward,
recognize, acknowledge, grateful, valuing,
encourage,
• Inquiry – question, study, discover, look for,
investigate, know, research, seek, see
Why Inquiry?
• Change begins with the questions we ask
• The act of inquiring is never neutral, it is in itself
an intervention, and exerts some kind of
influence.
• The wording of the question largely determines
the answer.
• In other words, you find what you look for
• There is difference between asking what have
been the major achievements and what are the
problems
Philosophical ground of AI
• You find what you look for. If you go looking
for what's broken, you will find lots of broken
stuff. If you look for what's working, you will
find that most things work
Appreciative Inquiry – the 4D Cycle
• Appreciative cycle
Discovery
“What gives life?”
The best of what is.
Appreciating
Destiny/Delivery
“Innovate what will be?”
Sustaining
Positive Core
Design
“What should be—
the ideal?”
Co-constructing
Dream
“What might be?”
Envisioning
Results/Impact
Steps in the Appreciative Inquiry Process
AI uses a change process called the 4-D model - dynamic
process of continuous change.
• Discovery - find out the strengths, capacity and
opportunities - (assessment of the situation) not
problems
• Dream
- Envisioning/Imagining ideal situation what
it looks like when the challenges (abduction, violence,
etc) are overcome - What do we want to achieve and
how?
• Design
Setting up ways to create the ideal situation
- planning
• Delivery putting dreams into action - project
implementation - Introduce the desired Changes in
practice
Application of Appreciative Inquiry
• Strategic planning – a frame-work for internal and
external analyses
• Participatory Project design
• Organizational and leadership development application of the Organizational and Programmatic
Capacity Assessment tools, Personal Development
Plan
• Monitoring and Knowledge Management application of Results Management Review and other
monitoring tools - find out the strengths and
achievements and ask for what could even be better
(for the future)
Benefits of Appreciative Inquiry
• Unifying factor – everybody want to share success but not
failure
• Improved relations - Good feeling to each other, inclusive
• Energizing – participants see capacity, potential to
contribute/do more
• Enhances commitment - People appreciate their
organization, their work and themselves
• Helped to build trust and commit to collaborate
Appreciative Inquiry is neither denying the existence of
problems nor is just being positive minded but it is a system
of dealing with problems to achieve improvement
• Not another intervention, but a new approach to existing
interventions
Application of Appreciative Inquiry and testing the
Watershed Approach through the pilot project on
“Mitigation of Challenges to Female Education
and Physical and Psychological Harm (VAW) of
women and girls in Munessa woreda, Arssi
Zone, Oromia Region
Civil society ‘watershed’ approach
What is watershed in the context of social
development process?
• It is an approach to identify assets and capacities
of different actors in a specific geographical
context (or ‘watershed’)
• It is a strategies for bringing people together to
agree on and take action to change things.
• It is CSSP’s approach for building coalitions of
CSOs, CBOs, Communities, government for
change
The underlying concept of watershed
approach
• Participation and contribution of all
stakeholders/change agents is essential for
sustainable change
• Need for Coalition building for joint action
based on trust, recognition of each others
resourcefulness, collaborative action
• Sustainability of the changes and impacts are
the centre
The Watershed Analogy
Physical Watershed
Civil Society (Social) “Watershed”
Holistic
Looks at the big picture of the watershed
as a whole (hills, forests, valley, rivers,
overgrazing, logging…)
Looks at the big picture – the root causes of
under-development (social exclusion, hard
to reach factors)
Evidence-based
analyses
Analyses based on good information on
problems and opportunities; good theory
of change/results chain
Good analyses of technical, social and
institutional gaps & opportunities; good
theory of change/results chain
Looks for synergy
(1+1=3)
Changes in different sectors add up to a
big change in watershed as a whole
(livelihoods, disaster risk reduction)
Interventions add up to more than the sum
of the parts, not just lots of unconnected
CS projects
Grounded in
Communities
Participatory analyses with communities,
to determine problems and priority
solutions
Demand-led – reflects priorities
determined by “hard to reach” peoples
Transformative
Aims to make big changes in the
watershed; Relies on changes in
behaviour (and coordinated action) by
many actors within the watershed
Aims to make big changes , bringing
together range of CSOs and other actors
with the potential to foster
transformational change through and
coordinated action
Sustainable
Aims for sustainable changes that
continue after intervention ends, with
strong ownership
Technically, socially, financially sustainable
interventions, with strong ownership,
Designing the pilot project in line with
the “CSSP Watershed Approach”
Key concept/steps in ‘watershed’ approach
Multi-faceted Issues identified at a local level
A variety of stakeholders or change agents identified
The core concept is ensuring the coordinated effort of
all change agents to address the issues through
complementary activities
Steps followed to apply the “Watershed
Approach” on Munessa Pilot project
Step one - Consultation meetings (using
Appreciative model of situational analyses)
Discovery phase
• Woreda government offices (administration,
security, education, agriculture, women and
children affaires),
• Local communities,
• Religious leaders,
• Status based associations
Key question following Appreciative
Inquiry model
• Start by asking achievements, challenges and
opportunities in the woreda
• Allow respondents to tell success stories and
opportunities to development in general,
education sector, girls participation in
education, the cultural basis for respect and
status of women in the society
Outcome of step one (consultations)
The following issues/challenges were identified
• Unemployment of youth
• Abduction, migration and school dropout of girls
• Low education quality
• Lack of medicines and service in the health institutions
• Low level of technology use in agriculture
• Lack of Support to the elderly and persons with
disabilities
• Low capacity of the women associations to address the
issues of needy women, girls, children, etc.
Step two: one urgent/core issue
identified
Challenges to female education - Abduction, migration and
school dropout with its expansion to violence against women
and girls
• High abduction of girls for marriage in the woreda (20-30
per year)
• High number of school age migration of female students to
Middle East Countries (about 900 per year)
• High school dropout (close to 4000 or 20% of the total
female students in the woreda)
• High rate of violence against women – rape, physical
harassment, FGM, economic harassement
• Consultation made with major change agents on the issue
and desired changes – build consensus
Step three: Key actors/stakeholders identified
• Woreda government offices and kebele
administration
• the police and judiciary
• the school communities – students, teachers,
parents, school boards
• the elders, women associations, idir leaders
• Leaders of the faith based organizations
• mass based organizations – women, teachers,
youth associations
Step four -Project design, appraisal and approval
process – dream and design phases of AI
• Project designed/planned following
participatory methods
• Project agreement with the local gov’t
signed
Step five: Project implementation - delivery
phase of AI
• Project launched with the major change agents
(stakeholders)
• Project implementation
Development of the Memorandum of Understanding
 The woreda attorney produced a document on the legal
provisions (criminal codes and family law) on violence on
women and girls with focus on abduction of girls for
marriage and rape and below age family imposed
migration
 The Roles and responsibilities of the government offices
and all other stakeholders identified and agreement
reached
Actions and strategies
• Establishment of woreda taskforce (composed of all
stakeholders) that is chaired by Woreda
administrator
• Training and meetings of the taskforce members
• Awareness raising to the public – conferences,
meetings, trainings, posters, leaflets
• Establishment of girls clubs in 58 schools
• Establishment/strengthening community policing in
38 kebeles
• Make schools attractive to the students with focus
on female students –extra tutorial classes
Girls Internship program –
complementary activity
Purpose
To create competence and self confidence of
young female professionals
To create favorable environment for the young
girls/women professionals to successfully
compete in the labor market
To create role models in the society and for the
girls in schools
Girls Internship program - process
• 20 professional girls participated in the program–
most of them are from the field of sociology and
social works, education planning and management,
psychology
• Attached to different government offices and
associations to analyze the legal frame-work,
achievements, opportunities, challenges, etc in each
office
The benefits of the girls Internship program to the
participants
• Enhanced their understanding of the local context and
working environment
• Enhanced their understanding about the realities under
which women, female students, people with disabilities and
older people live and their wishes
• 40 research reports produced in groups and individually
• Helped them to understand themselves better – who am I?
what is my role in the society? What can I contribute?
Achievements of the Pilot project
• Abduction reduced from 18 (officially reported) in 2004
EC to 6 in 2005 (close to 70% reduction)
• Family imposed Migration reduced from 1101 (928
female in 2004 E.C to 231 students (223 female) in
2005 (75% reduction)
• School dropout reduced from 7551 students (3972
female) in 2004 E.C in 2004 to 2164 students (939
female) in 2005 – 741 students were brought back to
the schools by the school girls clubs
• 13,500 women organized in 28 women associations (so
far) – to take responsibility to mitigate violence against
women
Process outcomes
• The relationship among different government
sectors, community and HEfDA enhanced
• Strong bond between the government
structure and women associations and school
girls clubs
• The operation of the taskforce gave new ways
of collaboration among government offices
Impacts on HEfDA- the implementing CSO
• New approaches to enhnce technical and
organizational systems introduced – score cards,
ladder of change, Results chain, Result
management review, personal development plan
• HEfDA became more visible in the woreda
• The trust and partnership with the government
offices enhanced
Lessons
• Trust building among stakeholders/Government appreciation, identification of gaps and building
partnership
• Windows of hope to dialogue with the government
on what has been understood as ”grey areas” for
CSOs interventions– differentiation of dealing with
the issues/practice and advocacy for the victims
Lessons that ensure sustainability of
the impacts of the pilot project
• CSO - Not as a forerunner but as a facilitator for
change – the positive lesson from the taskforce
(coalition building at kebele and woreda levels)
• Trust building and collaboration with the
government offices and the society at large
• Support the people to take responsibility over
their issues – strengthen the women associations
or school girls clubs to deal with issue of violence
against women and girls
What follows?
• Draw lessons – what, why, how
• Share the lessons – modeling positive
experiences- coaching/mentoring of emerging
and young CSOs
• Expanding the watershed – scaling up – based
on the evidences and learning e.g. mitigation
of different forms of violence against women
on wider geographic area more stakeholders
Galatooma